“Later, I saw my mistake.
“I have called the portrait foolish, and it is so in one sense, in the sense that most people would give it, but not in the sense which still to me is true. For I do set my foot on trivial love and mere fondness for love’s sake alone.”
She was walking to and fro again, her brows lowering. Tacita sat mute and pale, the vision of a terrible struggle rising before her mind.
“How perfectly logical an utter mistake may be!” Iona exclaimed with a sort of fierceness. “I reasoned with myself. I made it quite plain to my mind that the people of San Salvador needed an example of lofty and laborious lives which set aside for duty’s sake all the joys of domestic life. I said, ‘This people was elevated for a century to a higher plane of feeling by such an example.’ It is a proverb here that the face of Prince Basil shone a hundred years after he died.
“I was half right. What kept the Israelites up to that pitch of enthusiasm which preserved them great so long? Not the goodness of the mass, which seemed as base as any, but the divine fire of the few. What made the great republic of the west something that for a time was equal to its own boast? The greatness and disinterested earnestness of the few. The nation which has no heroic leader is a prey to the first strong arm or cunning voice which seeks its subjugation. My plan would have been perfect if another leader had been growing up, as in the time of Basil, one of unquestioned right and character. But as I studied longer, I saw the flaw. Ion has been known here as a wayward boy, though noble. Besides, there has always been a real Dylar.
“Gradually the question readjusted itself in my mind without my own volition.
“Dylar and Iona married would unite the actual right and a shadowy one of sentiment, and the need of a leader would consecrate the marriage as still something ideal. Our son could not be a common one. I would pour all my soul into him. I would make him enthusiastic, courageous, wise, and eloquent. He should go down and work beside the daily laborer, as I have seen Dylar do, till only labor should seem worthy of a crown. He should be full of fire, like the old gods. That dead moon-like calm that people call Olympian is not Olympian. They were creatures of fire. They trembled with strong life like flames.
“It all flashed upon me. I saw what should be. But how could I inspire Dylar with my thought! A woman has limits in such circumstances. Nature imposes them. I could only wait till my plan of empire was perfect, then set it before him in all its splendor. What could he say but ‘Let us work together for this new Eden! Let the future viceroy be our son!’ There could be no other conclusion. It seemed sure, and on the point of realization. I waited only for his return to lay the whole before him. And then—and then”—
She choked, and, tearing the lace scarf from her neck, cast it away.
Tacita was deathly pale.